How Much To Budget For New Zealand? || Breakdown of what I spent in 9.5 weeks on the North and South Islands

I thought it might also be useful to have a quick post detailing the total expenditure for my entire 9.5 week trip. This way I can work out a rough idea for you, of how much to budget for New Zealand! I’ll list the spending categories below with the total spend and what that works out to be per day.

EXPENDITURES:

(Total spend in 9.5 weeks/ 65 days)

ACCOMMODATION – $277 / $4.26 per day

ACTIVITIES – $2,222.20 / $34.18 per day

FOOD – $1020.23 / $15.69 per day

DIESEL* – $644.77 / $9.91 per day

EXTRAS – $566.94 / $8.72 per day

VAN STUFF – $126.40 / $1.94 per day

CLOTHES – $225.86 / $3.47 per day

This meant that our average spend each day in New Zealand was NZ$78.17 / £44 / US$56.

BUT please bear in mind this doesn’t include the cost of us buying the campervan and paying for insurance/ WOF/ registration/ repairs etc. After selling our campervan at the end of the trip and working out how much owning the campervan cost us, it was only an additional $428/ £242 / US$311 each. Adding that in increases the the daily spend by NZ$6.58/ £3.73/ US$4.78, which I think is a bloody bargain considering how much we saved on accommodation and how much a bus pass would have cost us! Plus, we had the added bonus of our own space and freedom to travel whenever we wanted 🙂

Our accommodation costs were very low because we were sleeping in our campervan. If you were to travel by bus, you would need to add around $25 per day to bring your accommodation up to $30 a day which is the average cost of a night in a dorm room in a hostel.

The graphs below show the total spend breakdown:

I hope this comes in useful, and you can use my figures to work out roughly how much you would spend on a trip to New Zealand!

If you have any questions about my travels, or how much particular things cost, please let me know in the comments and I’ll get back to you 🙂

Heya 🙂 I don’t have a post showing where I stayed sadly… we just used the app “Campermate” to find somewhere each night. Sometimes campsites, mostly just fields/beaches/sides of roads haha. Super easy to use and you can filter by self contained/ non self contained or camping to find spots where you are allowed to stay. Have an awesome trip – NZ is the best! x

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Hey there

welcome to the wild life!

I'm Alys, a full time explorer and vegan food blogger :) I've just finished working my way overland from Europe to Hong Kong (via Russia, Mongolia & China) and am now travelling around New Zealand!
Come join the adventure....